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Creating a Multipliers Culture
Liz Wiseman’s research revealed how people’s intelligence can be multiplied or diminished by their leaders, with some leaders getting nearly twice as much intelligence from their teams as others. This variance means that some leaders are able to get more ideas, broader perspectives, and keener insights from their teams, while other leaders simply drive their teams to work harder. In an economy driven by the speed of turning consumer insights into market-disrupting innovation, simply working harder will be an increasingly ineffective approach. I believe this explains the enthusiasm with which our customers at BTS, across industries and global cultures, have embraced Multipliers as a leadership philosophy and a practical approach to training leadership skills.
BTS and the Wiseman Group found each other through our mutual customers. At an engagement with a large Silicon Valley software company, we were exposed to Liz’s thought leadership through the Multipliers book and her keynote address to their senior staff. At the same event, Liz was exposed to BTS’ powerful learning approach—teaching leadership concepts in deeply contextual business simulations.
In 2016 we collaborated with Liz to create the Multipliers Simulation, a 1- or 2-day simulation that explores all aspects of Multipliers in an exciting and highly applicable simulation.
In addition to the Multipliers Simulation, BTS also embeds Multipliers concepts into our fully custom simulations, connecting Multipliers leadership to the deepest context of our customer’s business transformations. As of early 2018, BTS has taught Multipliers to more than 13,000 participants across 78 client organisations.
But there are factors beyond the individual leader that can have a profound impact on whether people in your organisation contribute all of their smarts. Three factors that help build a Multipliers culture in the companies we work with are:
One of the things I loved about Multipliers when I first encountered it was the playful and provocative language. Leaders could function as ‘Multipliers’ or ‘Diminishers’. Multipliers did things like ‘magnetise’ themselves to attract talent, and ‘liberate’ people to do their best work. Diminishers, on the other hand, acted as ‘talent hoarders’ and ‘tyrants’. And even great, multiplying leaders might fall into ‘accidentally diminishing’ by being ‘rescuers’ or ‘idea fountains’.
These were new words for ideas and concepts that companies have been trying to express in dry, unread competency frameworks for decades. In some cases, the Multipliers vocabulary captured brand-new thinking about how leaders positively impact their people. The language was catchy and viral—I found myself using it immediately and naturally.
The effect of these new words promote new and better conversations between leaders and those they lead, and between leaders themselves. When people have new words, they can have new conversations and even new thoughts. Employees who feel unable to work across department or project lines finally have the words to help their bosses realise that they are hoarding and controlling talent. The supervisor who wants to help a team member work more autonomously can give a stretch challenge.
An executive customer of ours at LG, the Korean manufacturing giant, now always carries invisible ‘chips’ to help her moderate her contribution in meetings. At a project kickoff meeting that we attended, she opened by
The effect of these new words is new and better conversations between leaders and those they lead, and between leaders themselves.
Sharing with her team, “We’ve had quite a few back-to-back meetings, and I’ve played too many chips. So, I’m going to let you all run this meeting, and I will contribute only as needed.”
As you incorporate Multipliers into your organisation, here are three powerful strategies for amplifying the power of the vocabulary:
Wiseman’s research revealed that a key difference between chronic Diminishers and accomplished Multipliers was their beliefs about their people. Diminishers don’t trust that their team can perform without their close supervision, and they aren’t willing to risk much to let them try. Multipliers take measured risks in giving clear ownership, liberating people to experiment and stretch, and plan for mistakes. Helping your organisation become smarter about risk can help all leaders function as more effective Multipliers.
We know it intellectually—if you never risk your kid getting a scrape, you create the near-certainty of fostering fear and physical timidity. Diminisher leaders are making exactly this mistake. By never allowing their teams to risk failure, they create a certainty of mediocrity, cautious indecision, and loss of top talent.
Multipliers, either by predilection or discipline, figure out how to minimise and mitigate risk, allowing them to give their teams much greater freedom and autonomy. How can we help everyone become wiser about risk?
Multipliers take measured risks in giving clear ownership, liberating people to experiment and stretch, and planning for mistakes.
Generally, risk management requires two things: assessment of risk, and risk-mitigation approaches. We’ll take these in turn.
All risk can be categorised according to its likelihood and potential severity. This simple act of listing all of the risks we are concerned about, and grading each according to its likelihood and severity, can dramatically increase our risk tolerance.
What often results after a session of ‘risk-storming’ is the realisation that the risks are not so intimidating, and that most can be greatly minimised with a bit of pre-planning and communication to stakeholders. For the risks that rank high on both likelihood and severity, a mitigation plan can be developed. Risk mitigation in people-leadership is similar to risk mitigation in other fields. The strategies I teach are:
By training leaders to be wiser about risk, and building good risk-taking practices into your organisation, you can help all leaders put aside diminishing beliefs and liberate their teams to do their best work.
One of the most intriguing things we see our customers doing is to make it easier to lead as a Multiplier, and harder to lead as a Diminisher, through changes in the work environment itself. Simple changes to things like meeting agendas, team roles, and empowerment policies can help employees experience clearer ownership and accountability, greater inclusion in debate and decision-making, and more frequent opportunities to contribute their thinking to the work at hand.
Many of our customers are implementing Agile concepts and principles, which at their best foster clear ownership and accountability, liberate people to try new things, and accelerate team members’ understanding of their ‘native genius’. Whether or not you are implementing Agile, you can focus on approaches such as:
Winning in today’s market requires having everybody’s head in the game. We are excited to see our customers embrace Multipliers as more than just another leadership catalog course and, rather, as a catalyst to transform their approach to leadership. And early results are fantastic. SAP, a 90,000-employee global software company, has employed all three strategies and is seeing significant improvements in employee engagement and leadership trust.
We are thrilled to be a partner with Liz Wiseman and to help her in her mission to ‘rid the world of bad bosses’.
We are thrilled to be a partner with Liz Wiseman and to help her in her mission to ‘rid the world of bad bosses’.
BTS began a partnership with SAP in 2015 to help them in their transformation to become ‘The Cloud Company Powered by HANA’. For a 35-year old global enterprise software company, this was an enormous undertaking.
In addition to revolutionising their technology, they also embarked on transforming their business model, touching every part of the company. SAP had BTS create highly contextual simulations with Multipliers embedded as the leadership philosophy to equip their leaders for this transformation. The results have been dramatic and measurable: